


if you're a fire then i wanna burn

by pinebundles



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/F, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Joniss - Freeform, Not too much, One Shot, lil bit of canon divergence maybe, withdrawals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-12 05:24:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4467023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinebundles/pseuds/pinebundles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in which training doesn't go quite as planned and katniss tries to help johanna get over her fear</p>
            </blockquote>





	if you're a fire then i wanna burn

**Author's Note:**

> (title from people like us by palisades)

She sat idle in the sterile room, all except her hands, which trembled defiantly, she attempted to steady them on the paper cup she was clutching but it folded under the persistence of her grasp in turn and water sloshed onto the floor. She braced herself but none had managed to splash against her skin, the girl exhaled a shaky breath. No matter how many times a day she reminded herself that she wasn't in the Capitol, that she was safe, she couldn't ever convince herself. It didn't work coming from other people either.

She'd heard the word "safe" a lot in the past few weeks, but she had yet to feel it. Safe was a lot of things, it was warmth and knowing but mostly it was freedom.

Johanna didn't feel very free trapped god knows how many feet under the ground rooming with the symbol of the rebellion in a hospital. _Speaking of which_ , she peered up at the clock hanging above the door, it was almost seven.

Johanna gets up against her body's resistance, her shaking knees buckled beneath her on her first attempt, sending her collapsing back into the chair, which shifted under the unexpected weight, leaving her to collide with the cool tile floor. She winced against the pain and let herself lay limp there for a while, before collecting herself. Her jaw clenched in a mixture of anger and pain, but a tremor even broke out against the strain, causing her teeth to chatter.  She punches the tile in vexation, her knuckles breaking on impact, she shakes a couple drops of blood, they fall to the floor. The colorless expanse was no longer a blank canvas and she felt a burning desire to paint it until it was covered. Her fist let her, colliding with the hard surface again and again and again, it took everything she had not to scream.

She dug her finger nails into her hairline and closed her eyes. Freeing breath and forcing it to come out smoothly, she picked herself off the ground because she'd been through so much worse than this. Despite the pounding behind her eyes and the cold sweat that broke out all over her,  the aching in her limbs and the utter trembling and protest of her entire body, she forced herself over to Katniss' room, peeling back the curtain and making her way to the younger girl.

She tilted her head to a small angle, and watched the girl sleep for a moment, marveling a bit. Sleeping for her had never been the poetry of steady, rhythmatic breaths and flickering eyelids, for her it was cold sweats and electric shocks and drowning. It was waking up to gasping breaths and thrashing and an inconsolable pulse. And that was if she slept at all.

There was a lot of shaking, she noticed, when she shook her head free of her self-pitying thoughts and shook the girl awake with shaking hands. Katniss let out a moan of displeasure (Or one of pain, Johanna couldn't tell.)  "Let's go, Everdeen," she muttered, turning her back to the other girl and starting her exit out of the room.

"I don't think I can do it," she says, and Johanna grinds her teeth in annoyance.

"Well until you know you can't do it, you'd better get up because I'm not going to let you sit on your ass and wallow in your self-pity all day," she snapped. "Plus I'm not doing this alone, you're the one that dragged me into this," she added in a hushed tone.

Katniss' resistance lifted and she got out of bed and got changed, her reluctance was evaporating slowly. Johanna led the way to the surface, no words passed between them it was a comfortable silence, one that did not demand words between them.

When they arrived the brown eyed girl choked on her breath, she swallowed hard but it wouldn't go down, her stomach turned. These weren't withdrawal symptoms.

Rain cascaded from the thick clouds levitating above, she could feel the blood rush out of her head and her breathing becoming shallow, she scrambled back out of the door frames. Her knees buckled but she caught herself on the wall, bracing shakily against the solid surface.

Solid. Still. Safe. It was okay, she tried to tell herself , but she could feel the electricity in her veins, the razor gnawing against her head, the water seeping into her lungs.  

Everything went black for a minute.

She felt herself collapse  but she didn't land on solid ground. No, she fell against softness. Bones, skin, a body. An arm wrapped around her waist, fingers combed through her hair, she thrashed at first, then relaxed. She sunk into the Katniss, who whispered soothingly into her ear.

When she came down and her breathing was steady aside from the occasional hiccup of recovery from her sobs, she heard Katniss whisper something along the lines of, "What did they do to you?" It was quiet, muted by her racing pulse, maybe, the blood pounding in her ears.

Johanna laughed and it was hollow, a vacant but trembling sound that seemed to echo on and on, pulling herself out of the younger girl's grasp. "What didn't they do," and Johanna wished that that could have been the end of that, but she knew full well that Katniss didn't stop until she got what she wanted.

"Tell me what they did to you," it sounded like a demand, even despite the break in the last syllable.

"Why? There's nothing you can do to make it better, you can't changed what happened to me, Katniss,"

"I can help you if I know what's wrong," this time it sounded like a plea.

Another hollow laugh, "No you can't." _No one can, I'm too far gone_ , the words were on the tip of her tongue but they felt too grave, too needy.

"Johanna, please," the girl was sounding more and more desperate and Johanna couldn't figure out _why._ And she knew that this girl had a large capacity to care for people, she knew that despite the girl's denials. Maybe she was unfamiliar with the way people caring for you felt, she'd pushed people away her whole life, she'd become the unchallenged master of bottling up her emotions. She gave in.

"Fine," she said and exhaled loudly, she wasn't prepared to tell this story out loud, by the time she came back most of the people who were around her knew what had happened to Johanna, she figured that they had kept it away from Katniss deliberately, thought it best to spare her the details, even if she and Johanna weren't friends. Were they? She decided it didn't matter.

"When we got taken they, um, tortured us, all of us. They wanted information, where you were, what the rebellion was, whatever," her voice quaked and gave out every so often, or a hiccup from her previous crying impaired her speech, but she continued nonetheless. "They, uh, they shaved my head, in case you didn't notice," she laughed bitterly, running a hand over her cropped hair, it was already starting to grow back, patches sprouted out at awkward angles, matted from sweat, she would have been self conscious about it if she cared enough. "Which wasn't that big of a deal, hair grows back," she looked up to Katniss, who was listening on attentively. "But that was just the tip of the iceberg. They had this... tank I guess, they used to throw me in it and fill it up, leave me submerged just long enough for me to start panicking, then they would pull me out and they would shock me," She trailed off, that was all she needed to know, she could figure out the rest from there. Johanna avoided eye contact with Katniss, she couldn't stand to see the pity in her eyes, she didn't want anyone's god damned sympathy, let alone any that belonged to Katniss Everdeen. She knew that every word she had spoken made her more and more vulnerable, stripped of her intimidation and confidence.

She used to think she was unbreakable, she had no one left, they couldn't hurt her, but somehow they did. They stole her pride, it was all she had left. They broke her.

Katniss got up and pulled her to her feet, and as soon as the brown eyed girl was stable on her feet Katniss pulled the other girl into her, wrapping her arms around her. Johanna was rigidly stiff, it was unfamiliar, foreign even, but she relaxed into the embrace easily, and her walls came down even if it was just for a second, it didn't feel all that bad. "I'm sorry, Johanna," was all she said. A thumb came up, wiping away the evidence of a tear, then navigated to the other side of her face, but Johanna pulled away, pulling a sleeve over her and using it to erase the rest of the moisture on her face, then wiping her nose. (Her personal hygiene was already shit, she had nothing to lose in that department.)

She'd always liked physical touch, the weight and heat of skin against her own, (Fingers were flames that set her skin on fire or hands that peppered goose bumps over every inch of her skin. Touches were temperature.) but only when it was deliberate. She didn't like accidental brushes of hands with strangers or mere acquaintances , it felt different, weighed less, meant nothing. To her, touch was the most important sense, it meant everything or nothing.  Now it meant fear, touch meant flinching away and writhing in the grasp of someone she did not know, but had already declared an enemy. Touch became synonymous with pain.

 “Can we just skip training?” said Johanna, her voice hoarse and she knew that it sounded fragile, but she didn’t mind, she had just spilled her guts to the other girl, her reputation was probably soiled in the other girl’s eyes now. But she had a feeling that Katniss had seen through her disguise before, because she had seen through Katniss'. The girl's eyes, Johanna noticed, having looked into them for the first time since the conversation, looked soft and compassionate, a warm smoke, different from the guarded and impenetrable steel she was used to. It’d been so long since she’d seen that sort of reflection regarding her, it made her breathing waver slightly in itself. She felt disarmed.

  
Katniss chuckled a little bit, probably recalling the conversation earlier, in which Johanna had seemed adamant that nothing could obstruct her from getting to training. “Yeah,” she whispered with a small nod of reassurance. "Where do you want to go?" she asked quietly, both girls knew that if they returned to the hospital they would risk being chastised by the nurses.

"We could hang out in the woods," Johanna suggested, wiping her nose once more. (She wondered if the cold symptoms were the fault of withdrawal or if she was coming down with something.) What she really wanted to do was go back to the hospital and plug herself back up to the morphling drip and get so high she forgot her name. She reminded herself that she had been through worse things than withdrawals and panic attacks.

Confusion (Concern?) clouded the other girl's grey eyes. "But it's raining," She said, her head shaking slightly.

(Definitely concern.)

Johanna shook her head and smirked a little bit, a strange pleasure came from hearing the concern in her voice, warmth spread through her. "Exposure therapy and whatnot, right?" Johanna said with a shrug, she hope the other girl didn't notice the waver in her voice. "Look on the bright side, brainless, if I pass out again you can hold me."

"Wh- I mean, I don't wan-. Wait," Katniss' was blushing furiously, something Johanna hadn't seen since she first met the girl, but even then she looked more angry than flustered. "Wait, do you want to get over it... your, uh, fear I mean?"

"No, Katniss, I would like to like the rest of my life in constant fear of liquid falling from the sky and I'd like to pass out every time I want to take a shower," her words were a rapid stream of anger and sarcasm. She felt warm fingers lace with her own, felt the contrast of warm and steady to clammy and trembling, her breath caught for a second, flinching away she looked up at the girl with furrowed brows. "What are y-"

"I know where we can go, I can help you get over it," Katniss murmured, cutting her off, and without waiting for any sort of acceptance or comment at all from Johanna, began to drag her in a direction in which Johanna had never been, a long but wide hallway, the heels of their standard-issued shoes echoing through the emptiness. Neither girl said a word. A sense of trust had enveloped Johanna, she wondered if this was something that she had just began feeling today, or if it had been with her longer.

A pungent, unfamiliar scent that overwhelmed her senses. It smelled a little like bleach, an aroma Johanna had just recently become familiarized with in Thirteen. "Where the hell are you taking me, Everdeen?"  Johanna half-demanded, the persistence in her tone lost to her assumption that Katniss would not answer.

(The girl stayed silent, Johanna realized she didn't always like being right.)

A couple of steps later the duo pushed through a door, led by Katniss, who threw her shoulder against it, swinging her hip into the handle. The hinges squeaked, Johanna winced at the sound, seemingly amplified to an ear-piercing screech. The scent she'd been smelling hit her like a wave as soon as the door was cracked, this was definitely the source, she recoiled a few paces, grimacing.

Katniss grabbed her wrist and guided her through the entrance. The sight sent her whirling back into the doors before falling down.

A swimming pool stood center in the room, the aqua water reflections glimmering on the dark ceiling above. (She had a solid view of the ceiling from the floor.) She exhaled a slow breath, she could do this if she wanted to. She tried to convince herself that this would be easy, she'd been through worse.

She couldn't feel sorry for herself anymore. She needed to do this.

Johanna started to get up, the grey-eyed girl offered a hand but she pushed it away for the sake of her pride.

Once she was up, she surveyed her opponent, it was about six feet deep all around. (She wondered what kind of pool didn't have varying depths, then she remembered their location.)

She ground down on her back teeth her head hurt and she wanted to go back to bed. She wanted so desperately to sink into her thin mattress and cover herself with a cheap blanket and listen to the mechanical purr of medical machines and let the seconds tick by until her time expired. "I hate to put a damper in your plans, princess, but I don't have a swim suit, and I am sure as hell not jumping in there with clothes on," Johanna huffed.

Katniss let out a breathy laugh. "Since when has modesty become one of your morals?"

Johanna winced. She recalled her first impression on the girl, the cool, confident girl standing nude in the elevator, that seemed so distant to her now, lifetimes away from where she stood, almost unreachable. She didn't want her life to be divided how it was, neatly compartmentalized into before the games, after the games, before the rebellion, and during the rebellion, but that was how it was, she wondered what other categories and sub categories she'd have to make up before she kicked the bucket.

She considered Katniss's question, figuring it was sometime between being abducted and being rescued. Sometime between having all of her self confidence stripped from her and losing her pride, or maybe sometime between having her head shaved and being electrocuted, she couldn't remember.

 She felt like everything she had had been stripped away, that she was just the framework of who she was before. She didn't even look the same, between the scars that peppered her body and the new haircut and wardrobe and holy hell did she look _older_ , like she had aged ten years in the months she had been there.

"I don't have any morals," she deadpanned because honestly, it was the only thing she could come up with that didn't sound foreign even to her, but her voice cracked pathetically and she saw the pity in Katniss's eyes and it made her nauseas, and it wasn't just a side effect of the withdrawals.

Katniss must have sensed that sudden riff in the air because she exhaled loudly, as if to somehow change the subject or resolve that tension and stalked off, muttering something about how "there had to be swim things in here somewhere."

Johanna took the time to scope out her surroundings, she wondered when people had been in here last and how Katniss had even found out about it. She figured it had something to do with training because the idea that swimming was used for entertainment seemed completely startling, did kids here even learn how to swim? And would they feel comfortable enough with it to do it for fun? She thought four was the only district who thoroughly enjoyed swimming, she'd barely been taught how to keep herself above water when she was a kid but she had figured it out after a while.

It seemed strange to have a pool when they were strict on water conservation and how they even got the pool chemicals was beyond her. She got to thinking that the whole concept was just pointless.

A voice startled her out of her thoughts, "Uh, this might work," Katniss said, extending a black one piece swim suit to her. Johanna made a move to grab it but the other girl moved it out of her reach, "Are you sure you wanna do this?"

Johanna grabbed the suit from the other girl with a nod, "If I wasn't sure I wouldn't have followed you here," she mumbled.

"You don't have to. You don't have to prove anything to me, you know?"

Johanna wasn't sure it was meant to be a question, but the way the other girl's voice trailed up at the end made it sound like one. "I'm proving it to myself, not to you," it came out with a bit more venom than she had intended, but she had never been one for apologies.

Katniss just nodded half-heartedly in response and turned around when Johanna started to shrug off her jacket.

She kicked off her boots and pulled off her socks, hopping with unbalance before giving in and leaning slightly on Katniss, and she was pretty sure she heard the girl chuckle faintly. The tile floor felt cold on her feet as she easily removed the rest of her clothing before kicking the garments into a pile. She examined the bathing suit before stepping into it, her leg missing the right hole a couple times before she got it right and pulled it all the way on.

She even made a move to pull her hair up until she remembered there was nothing there to secure.

"You can turn around now," Johanna told the other girl, kicking her boots to the side with the rest of her clothing. As Katniss turned around, Johanna didn't miss the way the girl's eyes trailed up her body, seeming to scrutinize every scar that painted the canvas of her skin. She refused to look up to the pity in the other girl's eyes, even though she could be sure that it was there just by the tension in the room.

She cleared her throat quietly, but the noise filled the air, even echoing around the empty room. "So, uh, how do I go about this?" She asked, it felt unfamiliar for her to ask how to do things, she'd always been more of a wing it now, consequences later type person.

Katniss hesitated, seeming to consider it. "I guess you just jump in."

Johanna nodded and took a couple steps to the edge of the pool, Katniss grabbed her hand and Johanna thought the whole hand holding thing was kind of become a common theme for the morning. "Actually, maybe just stick your feet in first or something and see how you do with that?"

Johanna nodded once more, yanking her hand out of the girl's grasp before continuing to cut her distance from the pool, it felt like she was dragging this on too much in her mind, that she was over thinking it, she could do it, she knew she could.

She sat down at the edge, not surprised when Katniss joined her. There was something about the way she looked at Johanna that rattled her, it was something like pity and Johanna thought it might be that she felt responsible for what happened to her. And Johanna thought that she could be considered, technically responsible for it, but in the end it was Johanna who had decided not to give them any information, it was Johanna who had spit in her captors' faces, she wouldn't put that blame on anyone.

 Anyone but Snow.

"It's not your fault, you know," Johanna said, scooting towards the water.

Katniss followed suit. "It kind of i-"

The brown eyed girl slapped a hand over the other girl's mouth and when Katniss pulled it off Johanna shut her eyes tightly and slipped a foot into the water. She felt the other girl's grip tighten on her hand and she exhaled slowly.

This wasn't so bad.

"You okay?" She asked.

Johanna mumbled in response, earning her another reassuring squeeze. She felt the other girl's feet plunge into the water beside her and she exhaled shakily, adding her other foot in, letting the water envelope it and breathing in sharply, she clenched her jaw hard. Johanna released the other girl's hand in spite of her tight grip, she wondered if Katniss was more nervous than her, but right now Johanna just didn't want to be touched.

Johanna took a deep breath in, and then she pushed herself off the edge of the pool and as soon as she hit the water, as soon as it rose over her head she felt the water seeping into her lungs and she wasn't breathing she hadn't taken a breath since before she jumped.

She knew she was under water but she wasn't in that pool anymore she was in the Capitol.

It's the small things that come back to her about that hell hole first. The days they let her walk on her own, a cold hand pressed to the small of her back, pushing her forward none too gently. She remembered how she wanted to pluck each spindly finger of her spine, one by one like flower petals. She knew that the last finger would always be "she loves me not" and she was okay with that, she knew it had to be that way, because everyone that loved her ended up six feet under.

And maybe it wasn't a bad thing that Johanna was half in love with this girl, she felt this uncharacteristic need to protect her with all that was in her. It was strange, this overwhelming fear that this girl would end up like the rest. Johanna had never been a protector, she'd been a firm believer in letting people figure shit out for themselves.

She felt those hands pushed into her back again, but it was _wrong_ , it wasn't the same it didn't feel right. The fingers were calloused and somehow kind, the touch felt light in contrast to the heavy weight of her lungs and her body and her surroundings, like she was being held.

Suddenly she was out of the Capitol and she was home in 7, the smell of pine and the sound of freshly cut fire wood crackling as it burned in the fireplace. She felt arms snake around her waist and the sound of a hushed voice in her ear, so quiet she couldn't make out what it was saying. She felt warm lips on her own, there and then gone then there again. There was pressure on her chest like someone was pushing, like her heart was pounding out of her chest.

Then she wasn't home or in the Capitol, but lying on a cool tile floor, soaking wet and shivering. Her whole body heaved and water poured out of her mouth, burning her throat on the way up. She groaned loudly as she was rolled onto her side by those familiar hands and a sigh of relief came from the owner of the hands.

"Brainless, did you just... were you just kissing me?" She sputtered.

"Yes, Johanna, you're just simply irresistible when you're fucking drowning," Katniss replied, "What the fuck were you thinking, jumping in there like that?"

Johanna coughed, "Well, if I recall correctly, this was your idea," she said, sitting up and before she knew it those familiar hands were on her again, wrapping around her. "You know, Katniss, you didn't have to kill me to kiss me, all you had to do was ask."

Katniss mumbled something Johanna wished she had caught and pushed her off of her before standing up and offering a hand up, which Johanna graciously accepted, Katniss handed her her clothes and helped her get dressed when Johanna didn't ask the girl to look away (Not that that stopped Katniss from avoiding looking at her anyway.)

"Do you think they missed us at training?" Johanna asked trying to break the silence while they padded down that wide corridor back to the clinic again.

Katniss shrugged.

So much for that route of conversation.

"What do you think is gonna happen when this is all over?" Katniss asked, a slight tremor in her voice, like the words were enough to stir fear as she spoke them. As if to ask _"Will it ever really be over?"_

Johanna bumped into the other girl with her shoulder, trying to offer some form of reassurance without any type of tender physical contact because she wasn't sure she was ready for the girl to find meaning in her support. (Lately she hadn't been doing anything to her full extent of capability, she was unsure, somehow born anew.) "I don't know. We're all pretty fucked up, no doubt shit will go to hell again at some point. You'll probably fall in love with the pretty boy and have a couple of kids and live on forever as a legen-"

"I don't believe in love," Katniss snarled. "And I don't want kids," she added sharply.

"Yeah, well, shit doesn't always turn out the way you plan. Look at me, I thought you and I were both going to die, and yet..." Johanna trailed off with a smirk. She was pretty sure Katniss was rolling her eyes, but she didn't validate it by looking over.

"What are you going to do?" Katniss asked, her voice a little bit stronger, more sure, now.

"When it's over? I don't even know I'll make it that far. And if I do, maybe I'll move in with you and pretty boy and your kids, sleep on your furniture, steal your rations, drink myself to death with Haymitch, who knows."

Katniss chuckled lightly and it brought a small smile to Johanna's face. After all, the girl had practically brought her back to life today, the least she could do was make her laugh.

Johanna sniffed lightly, wiping her nose with her sleeve. "Why'd you save me today? When I almost drowned or whatever?" She asked quietly.

Katniss shrugged. "You're my ally... or something, I don't know, maybe I'm used to saving people or something."

"Or something," Johanna parroted back to her, a mumble at most.

_Of course she doesn't care, what did you expect?_

She shrugged her conscience out of her mind, she should have known better.

"You're my friend, I guess, right?"

Johanna smirked, feeling a little dizzy, and she was pretty sure it wasn't a side effect of the withdrawal. "Careful, brainless, don't get too mushy on me."

"Fine, I take it back," Katniss replied, a hint of a challenge lying under her words.

"What? No, you can't take it back what the fuck?" She said, accentuating her words by giving the taller girl a slight shove, sending the girl stumbling a couple paces backwards into the wall of the corridor, but she was more confident that it was for drama's sake because she knew she barely had enough strength to stand on her own two feet.

 "Oh and what are you going to do about it?" Katniss asked, her face straight and unfazed, and god was that the opposite of how Johanna felt because who the fuck says shit like that?

"Don't know, probably nothing, since you're the Mockingjay and all, can't hurt the precious hero of Panem," replied Johanna, something shifted inside her, made her feel like her old self for a second.

"You disappoint me, Mason, the old you would have had your axe to my throat," Johanna felt herself subconsciously step forward, she convinced herself it was because the girl was talking too quietly and between the ringing and blood rushing in her ears she was sick of straining to hear. "But I guess you're all talk and no action now, right? How'd they manage to do that to you?" Katniss' voice was somehow laced with an enticing venom and Johanna wanted to taste it in the worst way.

Maybe it was the withdrawals.

"Shut up," she said and she wasn't even confident that the girl even heard her because she couldn't feel anything but white hot anger because how dare she? She'd told the girl exactly how they had fucked it up, and it was her fucking fault. How dare she? Her pulse was racing and her breath was heavy and hot, mixing with the other girls and they were almost breathing each other's air.

"Make me."

It wasn't the withdrawals.

She surged forward and it was clashing teeth and dilated pupils and her lips found the other girl's just as her hands found her face and it was bliss and anger and synchronization and so many contradicting feelings and her pulse was racing and she could feel herself shaking like a leaf but she'd never felt so alive. It wasn't like anything she had imagined, (And god had she imagined the moment, over and over and over again until she could almost feel it,) but it was perfect in some fucked up way. The kiss spoke for itself, desperate and needy, like the world was falling apart around them, Johanna kind of thought it was because the seconds were fleeting and she was pretty sure she hadn't taken a breath since it had begun but she decided air was overrated anyway, it had gotten the other girl's lips on hers earlier and she didn't want it to be the reason they were taken away.

And she knew that it wouldn't last. She _knew_ that, she knew that Katniss would pull away and the moment would fade away and she would never experience it again. It would become something to think about when she laid her head on her pillow that night and tried desperately to climb into the dream world so she could live in it again, feel the girl's lips again, or the way her fingers cupped her chin to tilt her head up or the way Johanna's heart felt like it was going to cease to pump blood through her veins, or that she would simply cease to be.

 She hadn't felt this good since the morphling and she knew that the first high was never as good as the ones after that but she didn't know that there would _be_ anymore.

So she pulled away and she tried to catch her breath but the other girl followed and their lips connected again and she let herself get lost in it, let it engulf her and she let the oxygen in her lungs run out until she pulled back and their foreheads met and so much for Johanna not providing tender touches, because if she wasn't in love with this girl before holy hell was she in deep now.

"You said all I had to do was ask," Katniss said, she could barely comprehend it because her head hurt from the lack of oxygen or maybe it was a symptom but she really couldn't tell the two apart anymore and her thoughts were variations of profanities and prayers.

When she could finally comprehend that the girl was referring to her previous statement she managed to spit out a probably less than coherent, "I don't recall you asking, brainless,"

"I didn't think you'd say yes," she husked and the tone made Johanna even more light-headed than she was before.

"I didn't think you'd ask."

She pondered the irony of this, getting over one drug to get addicted to another. And yet she'd never wanted anything more than to feel this high every moment of everyday.

 She wondered how long you had to be addicted to something to have withdrawals, wondered if the moment she'd fallen in love with Katniss had been the start or if it had just been in the time moments ago. She didn't want to have to give her up like she'd given up the morphling, didn't want to ever reach the withdrawal.

And something about the way Katniss' knuckles brushed against her cheek and the way her thumb brushed over the broken skin on her own gave her hope, so she kissed her again and they chased the high together.

**Author's Note:**

> hey guys, i hope you enjoyed this, thank you so much for reading, it really means a lot to me. i hope this wasn't too out of character. this is the first fic i've finished completely and it's been in the works for a while, so i hope you didn't get too bad of whiplash between the moods and stuff. thank you so much, again, you can find me on tumblr at pinebundles if you want to talk about these idiots or let me know what you think!


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